Shonky Leases And Skirting Boards: Ep 91

A clinic build can humble you fast: one week you’re mapping out opening day, the next you’re dealing with migraines, dental surgery, delayed materials, and a renovation that refuses to run on your calendar. I’m sharing a candid, real-time update on reopening my naturopathic practice on the Gold Coast and what it’s actually like behind the scenes when you’re trying to set up a clinic after major health challenges. 

We talk through the clinic space hunt in today’s commercial rent market, including the shock of rising prices, the true impact of outgoings, and the uncomfortable reality that some agents will play games with “deals” and bidding tactics. I unpack what happened when a lease was signed out from under me after I’d paid for legal review, why I now value ethics and building maintenance as much as price, and how I decided an upstairs clinic with a tree outlook was the right trade-off for me. 

From there, it’s all practical: renovation delays like flooring and skirting boards, budgeting buffers, and the sneaky costs that show up in the “little bits” of fit-out. I also share my approach to dispensary management as supplement prices rise, why I’m reopening with a leaner herb range, and how going back to herb monographs can improve clinical flexibility without tying up cash in stock. Finally, I explain the consult structure I’m keeping, how I speak to clients so they follow through, and how I’m designing clinic hours around school pickup, rest, and long-term sustainability. 

If you’re building a profitable practice without burning out, this one will help you think clearer and spend smarter. Subscribe, share it with a practitioner mate, and leave a review so more clinic owners can find it.

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Transcript

The Clinic Space Search Begins

Losing A Lease And Lessons Learned

Rent Reality On The Gold Coast

Choosing The New Upstairs Clinic

Renovation Delays And Stock Planning

Lean Dispensary And Smarter Spending

Consult Flow And Leading Clients Clearly

Designing Hours To Protect Health

Mentoring Changes And Triple P Launch

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Hi everyone, welcome. Thanks for joining me. Now, this is a little bit of a let's call it a bonus episode because I know you're all very interested what's going on with my new practice setup because I'm getting lots of emails and um messages which I absolutely love, so please don't stop sending them through. But I thought it would be really, you know, real time to give you an update of what's going on, what it's been like, um, and how it's all coming together. So, personal update. Where am I at? Well, you know what? Isn't it funny how when you start doing things other things happen? Best laid plans, that saying came for a reason. Since I started organizing the clinic, I had a couple of weeks out with the migraine. I had an infected wisdom tooth that infected the bone. I then broke a molar on the other side and needed a major dental surgery to fix that. It's just been a funny, funny phase. Hey, funny phase. Uh, but I really feel like it's often like that. It's almost like too many plates spinning in the air, isn't it? But as for the clinic, things are moving forward and and things are going ahead. One thing that I would say in a big learning through all of this is we need to be okay with the timelines as they happen. Because when I took on this practice and I thought, well, I'm gonna open on the 20th of April, when the kids first go back to school after the Easter break, I'm gonna open that day and get straight on into it. What was actually happening though with that date as the deadline? There was a few things that weren't going so well. Some of the things that it were ordered weren't arriving on time. Things like the flooring, oh my gosh, the flooring was so much harder than we thought to actually install. It was supposed to be an easy DIY job. Now, once we were one room in, we'd worked out how to do it, we got a lot better at it and got quicker. But my husband and I laid the flooring in there, and that took longer. Um, and we were both a bit stressed. And I noticed that, you know, he was getting a little bit snappy with me, and I was getting a bit snappy with him. And I was thinking this was supposed to be a fun process. This is something that we've worked towards and planned. And for a long time, we actually didn't know if I'd ever be able to do this because of what had happened with my health and the pelvic mesh reaction. You know, probably 2021, end of 2021, major health flare that happened then. We both were setting up thinking I may not actually never be able to work again because that was another big hit of the stuff that was going on with my health. And um, you know, that's where we were at. So to be here now in 2026, the meshes removed, I'm about nine months, ten months, something like that, post-surgery, and you know, things are well enough that I can go, yeah, I feel like I can go back to practice. So that's a huge thing. So let's start with where where this all began, with the clinic search. I know a lot of you struggle with this one, and it can be so hard finding the right place, can't it? I talked to a lot of my clients about this as well, and a number of them are out searching for clinic spaces at the moment. And it it's a big, big thing to commit to, isn't it? Particularly if you're taking it on on your own. For those that are, you know, a bit bit earlier in the journey, I suppose. Great idea to go out and start renting a room somewhere because you've got that professional space, but you've got the lack of pressure, you're not paying the rent, you're not paying all the outgoings, etc. Um, so clinic. You probably saw those of you that are friends with me on Facebook and Instagram, you probably saw that I think it was February, I'd found a space and I was really excited by this space. It was an old Queenslander that had been renovated. I didn't like the entry in that it was on the second level and it was up a really skinny, dodgy staircase. So we were gonna have to get some stairs fixed. Uh, but anyway, apart from that, it was old Queenslander, had stained glass windows, big bright areas. You know, I was really excited to take that on. And to be honest with you, it was pretty inexpensive. Commercial rents have gone through the roof since COVID, and I honestly, it took me a while to get my head around the fact that they're so expensive now. I had to really take some time to be okay with that and accept where things were at there. But anyway, so that one was going nicely, so I thought, and they had actually asked me before they were willing to sign the lease with me, they wanted me to get the solicitor to have a look at it, my solicitor, which sounds fine, doesn't it? You think, okay, fair enough. I went to my solicitor just to get them to look it over and sign a document, it's like two and a half thousand dollars, which I think is we think we charge too much. Oh my gosh. But anyway, they asked me to go and do that on a Monday, and I said, great, I'll have it back to you by the end of the week. And on Wednesday that week, without speaking to me at all, they'd signed a lease with somebody else. Right out from under me. And look, my solicitor said, unfortunately, this happens more often than not, particularly here on the Gold Coast. Apparently, it's quite rife for it. So I'm out of pocket on two and a half thousand dollars of legal expenses on a clinic that I don't even get to have. Now, what I will say, I'll caveat it, because it's really funny. In the couple of weeks afterwards, by chance, I ended up meeting someone who rents in the same building. It's an old Queenslander that's been converted to commercial offices. So someone that was downstairs and she was trying to break her lease. It was way too small for me. But anyway, I got chatting to her. It turns out that the there's so many issues there with the real estate agent. There's mould in the building, which is not what I need after what I've recovered from and the type of clients I help. I can't be in a mould-ridden place. The amount of issues that she shared with me that I I won't repeat here. I tell you that issue with the lease, I don't think I don't I wasn't hard done by it. I tell you this, the universe saved me, saved me from a big, big problem. So that was fantastic in hindsight. But at the time I was gutted. I was gutted, and I was absolutely angry about having to pay for that solicitor. But anyway, so I saw so many clinic spaces. Oh my gosh. And what I discovered on the Gold Coast current market to get ground floor like what I had at Oxenford, I had ground floor, the rooms in there weren't particularly big, but they were big enough. Um, not big enough for a massage table, unfortunately. But I had two consult rooms, a dispensary, reception, so it was fine. But to get that sort of thing again was going to be nearly$100,000 a year. The best one that I found, and this one actually had quite nice big rooms, big enough that you could put a massage table. Um, and it already had plumbed-in sinks in the rooms, so you can put massage in. I don't know about your area, but here on the Gold Coast to have massage in a room, you actually have to have a plumbed-in uh basin in that room. So, anyway, this was a great-looking space, but you could tell there were some issues with maintenance, the air conditioner was making a funny sound, you could see some leaks in the roof, the toilets, the shared toilets that your clients would have to use were pretty run down, just some maintenance issues for a space that was$95,000 per annum plus$7,000 outgoings, and outgoings are fees for what they call body corporate. So they would be using that to maintain toilets, maintain gardens, etc. So you still obviously have to pay for your um electricity and your internet and your phone and whatever else you need. So that was that was the best that I found. But I'm gonna be up front with you. I was not comfortable jumping back into a clinic with that kind of lease on it. My clinic down in Oxenford was just under$40,000 a year. So that's, you know, a dump, a jump of double. Yes, I have space for additional practitioners, but it just felt like too much of a stretch. Too much of a stretch. So I kept looking, and then I found the place that I'm in now. I probably saw uh maybe eight, maybe nine different places before I found this one. Lots of different ones out there, but by and large, what I can say is they're really expensive. Commercial rents are a bit expensive in this market, and they're not very good quality. This one is very good quality in that it was old, so that's why we're having to renovate it. But the building is in tip-top shape, it's very well maintained. The woman who owns the building has a big penchant for fire safety for some reason, so everything is completely up to code with fire safety, and you've got, you know, extinguishers everywhere, and it it's almost over the top. Um, but for some reason she's very into that, but she maintains it very, very well. It's owned by a retired lady, and apparently this is her retirement income. So she may she has people that maintain the building, groundskeepers, etc., and it it's in very good condition. So, and the um real estate agents just seem very, very ethical, very upfront. So that was one of the reasons I took this. The only thing that put me off here was it's not on the ground floor, it's on the first level. So there is a flight of stairs to walk up and there isn't an elevator. However, you know, I'm not the first practitioner in the world whose clinic was upstairs. And the benefit of being upstairs is we actually have an outlook over all the trees, and when you look out of the clinic, all you see is trees. Trees, and you hear all the birds and you see all these gum trees. So for me, I was like, right, no, that outweighs it. I'm I'm happy with that. We'll we'll take this one. So this space has three separate treatment rooms, and they're all really big. Uh, two of them are six meters by sort of three and a half. The smaller one is about four and a half by three and a half, the reception is like six meters by six meters. So they're all really big areas. There's also a multi-purpose room out the back, which is about 12 meters by about five. Um, there's also a kitchen, and there's two toilets within the actual clinic suite itself. So my clients don't have to go anywhere. They're, you know, it's all nice and private, which I really, really loved. But, you know, again, is it more expensive than I wanted to spend? Yes. Yes, it is. So that space is a bit under$4,000 a month, and outgoings on top of that is another$400 a month. Outgoings there cover landscaping and the fire safety and whatever else they want to put it to. But really, that's quite reasonable. Interesting to note, the other place I told you about that was$95,000 a year. Last week I got a phone call from that real estate agent saying, hey, we still haven't rented it, and the owner's willing to cut a deal, and thought you might be interested to hear. And I said, Yeah, I'd be interested. I'd be interested. Tell me, tell me what what the deal is. He said, Well, they've cut back the rent to forty six thousand dollars for a year. And at that point I'm thinking, hang on a minute, am I gonna kick myself a little bit? And then he says, and so forty-six thousand dollars a year rent and the outgoings are seventeen thousand seven hundred and sixty-five. I said, Hang on a minute. I said before when the rent was ninety-five thousand, the outgoings were only a bit over six thousand. I said, nothing's changed. I said your toilets are in a really bad state, your landscaping's terrible, the signage needs replacing. I said, You can't tell me that that's a bonus when you've cut the price back, you know, you're absorbing some of it into the um the outgoings. But anyway, so there was a bit of a uh-uh, no, we're not, no, we're not. And I said to him, Look, I've I'm on a lease, I've signed somewhere else, so you can take me off your database. But case in point, I wanted to point that out because people are shonky. The real estate agents are shonky. Be aware, be careful, cover yourself, have your eyes open, because I think I'm really well versed in a lot of things. But look what happened to me on the first clinic. And now this guy's coming back going, hey, look at this great deal we've got. There was another clinic that I looked at that I thought would have been really great. The rooms were pretty small, which was a sm bit of a problem. But anyway, the location, it was right between a doctor's surgery and a QML. It was ground floor, plenty of parking. And it's been vacant for over a year, and I have seen it a bit, and the rent was around 80,000. And all of a sudden I got an email from one of the commercial property sites, and it said they've reduced the rent to 45,000 incentive for the first three years. And I was like, ooh, that's a really good incentive. However, it was a complete lie. Complete lie. So I get an email back saying we have an inspection, you and I, next week, whatever time date it was. We've now opened it up to an open inspection because we have so much interest. So you won't be the only person there. And I wanted to let you know that even though we have an incentive on the property, we're asking people to put in their highest bid for the rental. So I show up there, I still went, and I thought, obviously, it's so chonky, I don't want to work with you guys anyway. But I still went to have a look. There was about 10 other people who showed up, and as soon as he said the deal that we're looking for whoever's willing to pay the highest rent, put in a bid, everyone bar myself and someone else left. I still walked through and had a look at it, but it's it's nowhere, nothing even half as good as where I am now. But um, it was really interesting to me that people want ethics, people want honesty. And they could see right through this chonky shark of a real estate agent. So, what were the other notes I had here? So, market, what's going on? Yep, we talked about that. So, every area is different. If you're looking to rent a clinic right now, I'm seeing lots of different things. Still pretty common to have sort of$100 to$150 a day as a rental. I have seen some higher. To rent one permanently, you know, so it's always yours. I'm seeing anything from sort of$350 to about$750 a week. And sometimes that includes your outgoings, sometimes outgoings are on top. Outgoings are being phone, electricity, internet, that sort of thing. Uh, some of them have reception, some of them don't. So they're all a little bit different. And I think the thing to remember is if you're looking for something to negotiate, have an idea of what your budget is, what you want to spend, what you want included, and just negotiate. It doesn't hurt to ask a question. So, right now with the practice, where am I at? So we've got the floors down, the paintings done, we have had to push back the start date because we've been delayed. We need skirting boards, can't finish the flooring installed so we have skirting boards, and we haven't been able to get any. So we've been waiting two weeks. Um, just got a message this morning. Skirting boards have come today, so we'll be able to get those in, but we've not been able to do anything else for two weeks. Can't put furniture in there because you can't put it against the wall when there's no skirting board. So we've been a little bit stuck. What I have been doing instead though is things like ordering the furniture and ordering the herbs and the supplements. We do have the I've got the fridge set up in there, so the probiotics are in there. So things like that are sorted. Um I have started building furniture, so we're just stockpiling that in the middle of all the rooms until we get the skirtings down, we can put it in place. One other observation though that I think is really important to make is the cost of the supplements these days. Wow. Hasn't everything gone up? And we know it has, we've seen it over the last number of years, but since probably 2022, I've been working online, using online dispensing. I haven't kept stock. And I knew things had had gone up, but I hadn't really kept abreast of it because it didn't bother me that much. I just ordered what I needed, dispensed what I needed, that was that. It really hit home this last week when I've been ordering the supplements, how much you guys are up against it, trying to keep dispensaries right now. What I would suggest is run as lean as you can. You don't need everything. There are a lot of products from a lot of different companies that will do the same thing. And I think in this market, keeping things affordable for your clients is really important. So if you can get a product that is, you know, wholesale$20, it does the same thing as one that's wholesale for$45. I'd be looking at the cheaper one. Um, but you know, it's up to you how you run your practice. But what I want to implore you is to have a look at what you've got there if you do need stock. Keep it as lean as possible. If you're a naturopath or a herbalist, go back to the book. And I know that sounds silly, but something I've done the last week because I've gone back to the book. We get used to using herbs for whatever we use to use herbs for. But those herbs have so many different actions. So I've made a point while I'm ordering my herbs. I downloaded the monograph and the tech data for every single one of them. So I order mine through um Optimal Rx directly. And a big shout out to my friend Andrew Whitfield Cook. Hello, Andrew. Thank you for your support and your friendship. He's been a big supporter of me while I'm getting back into this clinic space. But I love and I've always loved Optimal Rx. Herbs are my go-to and I fill any holes I have with whatever other brands I can get. But um, I've been downloading all the monographs and the tech data sheets and reading through them. Just it's so good to refresh your memory sometimes, isn't it? And putting in my head that, oh, that's right, I forgot that herb can do XYZ. So you don't have to have a huge dispensary with hundreds of different things if you don't want to, because there's so many different ways to get the actions and the outcomes that you need. Going back into this practice, my previous practice at some point, I think I had nearly 200 bottles of herbs or a bit over. Um, this one I'm starting up, I got 72 bottles. 72 bottles of herbs, and I probably won't get much more than that, honestly, because when I've worked out the kind of patients that I'm working with, it covers everything that I need. And again, having a really clear niche helps with that. Chronic complex conditions, I know the kind of things that my clients are dealing with, I know the kind of supplements and herbs I need on hand. So that's something it can really help you. There's no point having stock on the on the shelves that you won't use. I know a lot of prackeys think, oh, I best keep some things here for menopause, even though I don't deal with people with menopause, but someone might come in. There's nothing wrong with saying to that client that I need a really specific supplement for you. I'm going to order it in. It's going to be here in a couple of weeks, it's going to be here in a week, three days, whatever it is. And we're going to start you on these things I do have. But the one that's going to really benefit you the most, I just want to get it in. I don't want to give you something subpar. I want to get in this really good one. Clients love that when you are being that specific. So don't feel that pressure that you have to have everything right there at your fingertips. You're not McDonald's. Okay. It's not a matter of fries with this. Keep your clinic dispensary if you have one as lean as possible, because that's the biggest place that I see practitioners bleed money in their practices. The second place I see you guys bleed money is training, training and professional development. Because it's training. And it we go to a conference and it's great fun and we fly and we stay there and we do this and we do that and we train in new modalities. And as much as that's really fun, it bleeds money that could otherwise go into reinvesting in your business, marketing in your business, wages for you. So pay yourself first and look at the other things second. Okay. Um, I also wanted to have a talk about how I'm changing things in my practice. What am I changing and how am I doing it? So, what I've changed, there's a few things actually. So I'm changing the way my consults work. I'm still sticking to my 60 minutes that I've always done, and those of you who work with me one-on-one, you know all about that. Um, I spend the first 20 minutes in history taking because I have a very detailed intake form, so I know a lot before they come in. I spend the next 20 minutes doing diagnostics, iridology, live blood, tongue, nail, all that sort of stuff. And then the last 20 minutes, we do treatment plan discussion, and my clients leave with the treatment plan that day. For some more complex clients, I call it a starter treatment plan because I might want to go and research their condition and change things, etc. But I always know enough that day to give them a treatment plan and send them on their way because they've come for help. I've always felt that this real responsibility that people have come to me that day for help and I have a responsibility to have them leave with some help. Most of my clients being complex chronic mystery illness people, they come in and they go, Cass, you're my last hope. If you can't help me, I don't know what to do. I don't feel right sending those people off going, okay, let me talk to you in two weeks when I've had time to digest this all. I'd rather send them off with something and then we can add change adjusting time. Um, this time around, I'm adding a different service to what I do, and I'll tell you more about that in another episode. But it's something that was really beneficial for my healing and a huge part of my healing journey. So I'm adding that to the clinic as well. And you know what's changing in this one? Um, Oxenford, I did have some part-time prackeys and things like that coming through. This time I actually am going to be hiring a room permanently to another practitioner, and I'm going to be looking to hire a practitioner myself. So adding in additional services, and it's not just uh nice to have, um, these things are going to be things that I literally prescribe to my patients because I know in certain situations this is some of what they need for healing. So it's a matter of right, part of your treatment protocol is we need to do three sessions of this thing. So things like that are really different. And again, I think something to learn from that is the way that we speak to our patients. If we see a specialist and the specialist says, I need to see you again in three months, and before then, you need to ride a bike every day for 10 minutes, you will attempt your very best to ride a bike every day for 10 minutes and you'll come back in three months. We need to be talking to our patients and our clients in that way as well, that based on where you're at, I need to see you again in four weeks, and I need you to do this blood test, or I need you to take this supplement, or whatever it is, because it just is a fact. If they want to get better, they need to do these things you're outlining, and that is just a fact. I think we can often pose it almost like a question. It'd be great to see you again in about four weeks if you could book that in. It doesn't give me any faith that you know what you're doing, it doesn't give me any faith that the client's going to actually step up. Up and book themselves in. Every client, book them in before they leave, but you probably already know that. What else am I adjusting? This practice is built around me. Built around me. Yes, am I helping clients? Yes, I am. I am going to be giving them the very best that I can. I'm giving them my all while they're there. But this clinic is a clinic built life by design, built around me. What I mean by that is I refuse to burn out again in a clinic. I refuse to let a clinic take my health. I refuse to let this turn into something that I hate doing or that I resent. This is my retirement plan. Okay, I'm turning 50 in July, and this is my retirement plan. And this is something that I've mapped out right through to the day that I'm going to retire. Now, within that, what do I mean by that? It means that for the rest of this year, I am opening the clinic only school hours. I am shutting the clinic every day at 2 or 2.30 to go and pick up Jasper from school. And after I pick him up, I'm coming home. I'm coming home so I can rest. I'm coming home so if I feel up to it, I can walk on the treadmill or go outside for a walk. I'm coming home so I can prioritize me in the midst of helping everybody else. I am opening the clinic on Saturdays, but only once a month. I'm doing one Saturday a month for the rest of this year, and I'm going to assess demand. If people don't want it, I won't continue doing it. If people do want it, I might consider adding some more. But I'm not doing every Saturday, I'm doing one Saturday a month. And they can come that Saturday. I'm not going to be bending over backwards to appease everybody anymore because that's not my job. Okay. I'm not responsible to fit into everybody's plans, everybody's life and their timetable. The other thing that I'm doing is I'm not working Friday. I want a day off. I want a day off to either rest, to paint. I don't get much time to do my painting anymore, and I miss doing that. I might want to go grocery shopping. I might want to go have a haircut. I don't know what. But what I do know is the thought of being back in clinic every day of the week makes my skin crawl. And I don't want to do it. So I'm not doing it. So Fridays aren't open in my diary and they won't be open in my diary. So can you see how I'm doing things quite differently? One of the other things is with this practice, particularly now I've got that multi-purpose room, I've always wanted to do workshops. So I'm going to be doing some of those. I've always wanted to do my mediumship circles and my women's circles. I'm going to be able to do that. So these other things that fill my cup and make me feel fulfilled in my business, I'm able to bring those in because of the way this practice is set up, because of the way that I'm building this practice. Now, what's been tricky? I think, you know, let's just be real, let's be raw. Have I had a few slept sleepless nights? Yes, I have. Anyone who knows me knows that as much as I know things cost money, I still struggle to spend that money sometimes. So this practice has taken some money. It has. If I need to, I can cover the first year worth of rent in this practice without ever seeing a client if I have to. Now, don't get me wrong, I I don't expect that to be the case. But for me, with the money scarcity that still sits there a little bit, I need to have a buffer sitting there so I feel okay. And so that's what I've done. I've given myself a buffer. Has it taken longer than I wanted? Yes. Did that stress me out a little bit? Yes. But I've had to let that go and I'm fine with that now. Has it cost a little bit more than I planned? Yes, it has. We didn't plan on having to replace the floors when we went in there. We thought we could make it work. But when we got the keys and had a really good look, the carpet tiles were so damaged and so stained and they weren't cleanable. They were so old that the glue underneath was lifting and it was a trip hazard. You know, we're talking about big OHS issue. Um, so we were going to have to do something. And to be frank, to replace glue and stick down tiles and make it safe was going to cost me as much, if not more, as replacing the timber. I am in the very lucky spot where my husband is an electrical engineer, so he did all the electrical changes that we needed himself. And he's also into carpentry and woodworking, it's his hobby, so he knows how to do a lot of stuff. I always laugh and go, he just knows how to do the man's stuff, because he kind of does. So that's been a huge benefit, but we did spend more because we decided to do the timber floor. So that was an extra two and a half thousand dollars on floating timber. Um we have to put skirtings on that, so that's$250 worth of wood for that. Um, what else has happened in there that we weren't expecting? Um, what did I not budget for is what I'm thinking. Um, some stuff for this new service room that I'm setting up. I decided that I really want this practice to offer a premium experience, so I've spent a little bit more on furniture than I planned, and I spent a little bit more getting a couple of things for this room that are going to add to the service experience for these people. Probably an extra$2,000,$3,000 worth in all of that. Bunnings took a lot of my money this time. The amount of little things that come up that you don't expect when you're doing this. Oh my gosh. We knew we had to replace some PowerPoints because they had all these conduits, which is the track on the wall with the PowerPoint, and it looks really ugly and really old. And my husband decided to swap all of those for internal cables where we could. We've still got one or two of those on the wall, but we've hidden them as best we can. But everything else is moved inside the wall. And, you know, we put in the budget$100 for some replacement power points and bit of cable or whatever. But then we found that, you know, there was no brackets in the wall for them to sit on, and then we need a little bit of plaster board to fix this thing, and we need this other thing, and then we didn't have the right tool, and we needed this drill bit. So what was like$250 in the budget for bunnings, bits and pieces, I think we've spent about$1,500 in bunnings. Things like that. So in the in the little bits and pieces, if you are doing something like that, give yourself a bigger buffer than we did. I've never done a clinic on this scale. So my one in Oxenford, all I had to do was paint it. Everything else was fine. The floors were ugly, they were these ugly old white grey tiles, they were pretty badly chipped in a few places, but I had big rugs going everywhere, so it didn't bother me. And apart from painting, that's all I had to do. Paint, and then everything moved in. Whole different ball game when you're trying to do things like move powerpoints, replace flooring, we had to replace some lights. Oh, and then my husband broke a light, so the flo the ceiling there, I don't love the ceiling, it's one of those drop ceilings with the foam boards in it. But um, it got these big fluoro light panels in them, and just you wouldn't even think it would happen. He just picked up one of the conduits and hit the light and it cracked. So we have to buy another one of those, which is a couple hundred dollars. So a few things like that popped up. In terms of uh dispensary, has that blown out a little bit? Yes, but not as much as as I would have expected. Um, I know where you can all get a little bit overboard with that. But so far, pretty much I've stuck to the the budget that I had. The herbs were spot on, the supplements are spot on. I spent exactly what I planned there. I did decide to get back the herbal teas um to be able to do the custom herbal blend, so I had to get dried herbs for that, which was I think I spent six hundred and something dollars on that, so it wasn't much. Um and I needed to get a new bark and bushflower kit, so that was a little bit extra. So anyway, a few little things cropped up, but again, those decisions could have been a no too. I don't have to have dried herbs. I don't have to have a new bark flower kit and a bushflower kit. I could have gone without those if I wanted to. And to be frank, had I not had the capital sitting there, I probably wouldn't have gone ahead. And I would have just waited and got them in a few months when the clinic was moving and busier again. So anyway, that's what's all going on there. Um, I hope that's been really helpful. Bit of a casual chat, but I just wanted to give you a heads up of what's going on. I've also been asked, though, getting a number of messages going, Cass, are you closing up this business? Are you closing up the mentoring? Oh my god, what's happening? No, I'm not closing up this. I've been seeing clients, naturopathic clients, online for the last few years. And I will often have a naturopathic client at 10 o'clock on a Monday and then a mentoring client at 11 o'clock on a Monday. And I'm good with that. I like the difference, I like the change. So I am going to be doing that. My mentoring clients are just going to be interspersed. You get to pick your appointment types as you always do, your appointment times, sorry. And um, my clients will pick their times for their clinic appointments and we'll just fit in. Now, there is going to be one change though. I am going to cut back the number of mentoring clients one to one I'm taking on, just from not a time point of view, but the amount of work I put in outside of those sessions. So even though we might have a 30 or a 60-minute session, I'm also doing a lot of work in the background on where you're at and how I'm going to get you from where you are to where you want to be, etc. So I probably won't have that time available. So I'm going to be cutting back my one-to-one mentoring slots. There is an email coming out this week with what's available now, and that's going to be the last spots probably until July. And when I do open up spots again, you'll only ever see one or two come up. I am going to be bringing back later this year, um, looking like July or August at this point. My Elevation Code Mastermind has had a big makeover. And look, it was a great mastermind. All of you have been through it, such great feedback, such great reviews. I really appreciate all of that. But I have tweaked it a little bit, and now it is called The Pathway to Profitable Practice. And we're going to be working together a little bit long longer term than that, which is going to help me really deep dive everyone's practice in a group mentorship mastermind style. So that is going to be coming out. There is going to be a page coming up onto the website. I'll put a link in the show notes here where you can jump on the wait list for that. As I said, it's called Pathway to Profitable Practice. I'm only mentioning this because a lot of you are mentioning to me that you're looking to come into mentoring in the next few months. So I wanted you to be really aware of what's going on and what's available. I don't want you to, you know, be disappointed and come and go, oh, I wanted to do something, but you don't have any space. So that's what is happening, and I'm really looking forward to continue to share the journey with you. Oh, and that's the other thing I got asked. People were asking with the pathway to profitable practice, what is it about? So it is mastermind/slash mentoring. It is group style, but anyone who's done group with me knows that there's so much one-to-one on there. I'm not one of these mentors that leaves you hanging. We have support in between. We have a private chat group in between where you can ask me anything. And in this, we're just calling it Triple P Pathway to Profitable Practice. It is a blend of mentoring. It's a blend of marketing. It's a blend of business strategy and it's a blend of clinical mentoring. So we're doing everything. Every month we're going to be talking about your cases. You can bring your cases that you need help with. And we'll do the clinical side. We're going to talk about your business, the strategy, where you're heading. We're going to be talking about your marketing. So what I've tried to do with this one is expand from how good the elevation code was and expand into everything that you need to know and experience while you're growing a successful practice. So anyway, friends, I will leave it there. Anything else you want to know about what's going on with me, the clinic, please drop me a message and I'm happy to answer it on one of these episodes. And otherwise, I will see you next time or here on the podcast. Have a great week, everyone. Bye bye for now.